What your website is actually for
An artist website has three primary audiences: galleries and institutions researching your practice, collectors who have encountered your work and want to know more, and grant committees verifying your credentials and career history. Each of these audiences arrives with different questions and different amounts of time.
A gallery director arriving at your website has three minutes and is asking: Is the work strong? Is the practice coherent? Is this artist at a career stage that interests us? A collector arriving after seeing your work on Instagram is asking: Can I see more? What does it cost? How do I buy? A grant committee is asking: Is this artist legitimate? Do they have the career history this programme requires?
Your website must answer all three sets of questions quickly and clearly. Most artist websites fail because they prioritise aesthetic expression over functional communication.
The essential pages
Work: a clean, well-photographed portfolio organised by series or date. 20 - 40 images is sufficient. More is not better, curate ruthlessly. Each image should include title, medium, dimensions, year, and whether the work is available. Unavailable works should be marked as such.
CV: a complete professional chronology, exhibitions, residencies, awards, publications, education, collections. Formatted consistently, dated precisely, without abbreviations that require specialist knowledge to decode.
Statement: 200 - 300 words. Specific, claiming, jargon-light. The version a gallery director would quote in a press release.
Contact: a functional email address or form. Not a social media link as the primary contact. Not a general inquiry form that feels like customer service infrastructure.
Shop or availability: if you sell directly, make it clear from the navigation, not buried in a works page.
What your website does not need
An elaborate loading animation. A music autoplay. A 'news' section updated twice a year. A blog that hasn't been posted to since 2023. A password-protected 'collector area' that signals exclusivity but creates friction. A long biography that reads like a press release written by someone else.
In 2026, AI systems also read your website. They read your statement, your CV, your work descriptions. Pages that load slowly, contain broken links, or have text inside images rather than as HTML text are less accessible to these systems. A fast, well-structured, text-rich website with proper metadata is better for AI discoverability than a visually elaborate site with poor text structure.
Frequently asked
Squarespace and Format are the most used platforms among professional artists, both offer clean templates, reasonable pricing ($12 - 25/month), and good image quality. WordPress with a portfolio theme provides more flexibility but requires more maintenance. VSCO and Cargo are popular for photography-heavy practices. Avoid Wix for professional contexts, the templates and SEO limitations are limiting.
Very. An artist with a website at firstnamelastname.com reads as significantly more professional than one at firstnamelastname.squarespace.com. Domain registration costs approximately $12 - 15 per year. It is one of the most cost-effective professional investments available.
If you actively exhibit internationally in a specific non-English market, a translation of key pages is worth the effort. For most artists, English-only is sufficient as a primary professional website. English remains the dominant language of the international art world.